In recent times, we are so willing to shower superlatives on average performances, it becomes progressively difficult to remember the real all-time greats for what they really were.Balraj Sahni is incontestably one of our all-time greats. And he didn’t have to die to prove it.Once Amitabh Bachchan and I were having a conversation about the great Balraj Sahni. And Bachchan confessed he was a faithful fan. “Balraj Saab was an absolute natural. The camera loved him, and he loved the camera back. They (the actor and the camera) shared a symbiotic relationship.”Bachchan shared his thoughts on the finest performances of the brilliant Balraj. “He was equally brilliant in all his parts. But if you insist on naming the best, I would go with Do Bigha Zameen and Garam Hawa. In these two films Balraj Saab was flawless.”As the emaciated rickshaw puller in Do Bigha Zameen, Sahni actually plied the rickshaw on the streets of Kolkata, unrecognizable in his dirty dhoti and unkempt appearance. When Om Puri played a rickshawallah in Roland Joffe’s The City Of Joy he modelled his performance on Sahni’s method acting.Some think Sahni was greater in M S Sathyu’s Garam Hawa. To prepare for the part Sahni had gone and stayed with a family in Bhiwandi, an area populated by Muslims. Sahni as Salim Mirza gives what many film experts consider the one single-most flawless performance in the history of Hindi cinema. He gets into the skin of his character and inhabits the innermost recesses of Salim Mirza’s soul. You really don’t see Balraj Sahni on the screen. You see this Muslim patriarch of a disintegrating family who never stops believing in his God even when He seems busy elsewhere.Sahni never acted. He was a method actor from before method acting was invented. Long before immersive acting came into vogue, Balraj learnt to own his characters as though they were part of his DNA.And yet the Hindi film industry never acknowledged his greatness. At a time when shrieking and ranting were considered great (they still are), Balraj chose to underplay all his characters even in heavy melodramas like Ghar Grihasti, Devar Bhabhi, Ghar Sansar, Bhabhi(a big hit), Choti Bahen and Shaadi.In the early stages of his film career, he was either made to play the husband in heroine-oriented films like Lajwanti, Bhabhi Ki Chudiyan, Anuradha, Seema, Bhabhi and Sone Ki Chidiya, or he played the lead in neo-realistic cinema, which had its roots in the progressive Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA).Commercial Indian cinema just didn’t know where to position the unadorned genius of Balraj Sahni. Not until Raj Khosla’s Do Raaste in 1969, where Sahni gave a profoundly moving performance as the patriarch desperately trying to keep the family together, did Sahni find commercial success.Early on, he started with the neo-realism of K A Abbas’ Dharti Ke Lal where Sahni had a strong though supportive role. Hemen Gupta’s Kabuliwala was a rare instance of a lead role for Sahni in the 1960s. As a homesick Afghan dryfruit seller in Kolkata, who misses his daughter, Sahni has moved generations to tears. This great performance came at a time when filmmakers cast him as the hero’s elder brother or the heroine’s reluctant husband. Satta Bazar in 1959 and Bhabhi Ki Chudiyan in 1961 revolved completely around Meena Kumari’s character, though admittedly Sahni was outstanding as the husband.Sahni died the day after he finished dubbing for Garam Hawa. When he had finished his dubbing he wasn’t satisfied with one line. So he called director Sathyu over to re-dub that line at Raj Kamal Studios. Sathyu went there at lunch time and re-recorded that one line.And then, there was silence.